Creating a Quote is very straight forward in the CRM. When you are on a Company or a Contact, just select the plus icon and select 'Quote' from the drop-down. 

After selecting the Quote option from the drop-down, a new window will open where you can start to log information about this Quote.   

The description should outline what the Sales Opportunity entails; therefore, it is important that you give it a relevant description. From the creation window you can also set the currency, choose a Quote template to base the Quote on, choose the salesperson who will be managing this opportunity and finally the Pipeline. 

If you have not specified a bespoke Pipeline, then this will use the default Quote Pipeline which includes a series of statuses; 1. Quote, 2. Awaiting PO, 3. Ordered or Cancelled. 

Once you're happy with the information entered, just press 'Create' at the bottom and you will be taken to your new Quote. Upon creation, an Opportunity will also been created with the same description and unique ID. 

Currency: By default, this will be set as ‘Home Currency’; however, this can be altered if additional currencies are added from within the System Settings. 

Customer Order Reference: In addition to the unique Quote reference shown below, which is created automatically when the record is first made, you can also add an additional reference if required by the customer. 

Source & Source Activity: As with an Opportunity, these are very useful options where you can record where the Quote originally came from. Options could include an Exhibition, a Mail Shot, generated from a Salesperson visit or by visiting your Website. If you have used a Campaign from the CRM, you can use the Source option to link Opportunities to Campaign Activities. This allows you to record potential income based on Activities you have performed, i.e. how many Opportunities and subsequent Quotes were generated after holding an Exhibition. 

Sales Person: A user of the CRM can be selected from this drop-down to be associated with the Record. This helps when searching and reporting to determine which user has contributed to the creation of the quote, essentially, the user who we want to take credit for the hard work.

Price Expiry: Once this is set, a pop up will appear warning if the date is in the past, this will happen when a Quote document is created or an order attempts to be confirmed. This is so that the user can confirm that the price is still current. 

Order Due Date: This field gets pushed through to the accounts once an order has been confirmed and becomes the delivery or order due date. 

Status: This will show which status the Quote is currently in. There are several different statuses available to be displayed such as ‘Quote’, 'Awaiting PO' etc. 

At the bottom of the Quote document is the section where you can add products to the Quote, it will also display any products which have already been added. 

The products which you can search for will come from your Inventory Management/Accounting System and contain whatever description and price details have been set against them. 

Clicking on the ‘Search for a product’ section, shown above, will allow you to look for any products which have been imported from the accounts system. Alternatively, you can select ‘Search…’ from the drop-down which will take you to an additional window, shown below. 

Searching for products works in the same way as searching for a record in the CRM. You do not have to type the whole name of the product for it to be returned. 

Once the search results have been returned, you can then add quantity values for any of the required products. These are then added to the Quote by selecting ‘Add’ at the bottom of the window. 

The Delivery Address is likely already populated; this is determined within your System Settings. It will either default to the address for the Sales Ledger, the Company or the Contact. If you wish to review the Delivery Address and make any changes you can do so in the Address Tab of the Sales Order. By clicking on ‘Select Address’ it'll allow you to search for a different address or add a unique one.

If you enter a postcode or area into the ‘Search for address…’ section, it'll return a list of available addresses and if one is selected then it'll automatically populate the address fields. There's also an optional section to enter any ‘Delivery Notes’ which need to be displayed.

With the Delivery Address populated, the system will automatically calculate the Delivery Charges. You can review the Delivery Charge options and add a Delivery Charge on the Delivery tab of the Quote.

The Delivery Charge options available will be based on the Delivery Charge setting configuration here. Often, the delivery options will be based on the time of day or the value of the Quote. If these change, you can use the 'Recalculate Delivery Charges' button to generate a new selection of Delivery Charges.

You can read more about configuring the Delivery Charge setting in this guide here.

Once you have the products and the values added, you can then confirm the order into the accounting system. Please note that you must have a Sales Ledger set up before you can confirm the order.

Subsequently, click Send to send the quote off to the customer.